A major tech reform bill that would prevent the industry's biggest players — Apple, Amazon, Google, and their ilk — from discriminating against smaller businesses that rely on the big platforms' services is one step closer to passage on Thursday after passing from committee on a bipartisan 16-6 vote. Senators Mike Lee, John Cornyn, Ben Sasse, Tom Cotton, Thom Tillis, and Marsha Blackburn all voted against it.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which was sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar, would prohibit Amazon from promoting its own Amazon Basics gear over similar products in search results. Similarly, Apple and Google would be barred from pushing their in-house apps over those from third-party developers in their respective app stores. The bill passed out of both the antitrust subcommittee and the primary judiciary committee with the support of that vote and will now be put forth on the Senate floor.   

Unsurprisingly, the platforms impacted by these proposed regulations are none too pleased with the recent proceedings. Apple's Tim Cook has reportedly been personally lobbying against the bill while Amazon has released the following statement:

There’s a reason why small businesses who sell on Amazon are asking Congress to take a look at the “collateral damage” that will fall on them and their customers, should the American Innovation and Choice Online Act become law. This bill is being rushed through the legislative process without any acknowledgment by its authors of its unintended consequences. As drafted, the bill’s vague prohibitions and unreasonable financial penalties—up to 15% of U.S. revenue, not income—would jeopardize our ability to allow small businesses to sell on Amazon. The bill would also make it difficult for us to guarantee one or two-day shipping for those small businesses' products—key benefits of Amazon Prime for sellers and customers alike. The bill’s authors are targeting common retail practices and, troublingly, appear to single out Amazon while giving preferential treatment to other large retailers that engage in the same practices. We urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Senator Klobuchar and Senator Grassley’s bill and refuse to rush through an ambiguously worded bill with significant unintended consequences.

A similar bill has already passed the judiciary committee's counterpart in the House though the President has not yet weighed in regarding his support of these proposals.

President Biden is following his executive order on cybersecurity with more concrete action. The leader has signed a memorandum aiming to improve digital security for the Defense Department, the intelligence community and national security systems. The notice sets firmer requirements, both for schedules and for the technology needed to lock down government data.

The memo lets the NSA require agencies to take "specific actions" in response to threats and security flaws, and asks the NSA to coordinate with Homeland Security on directives. Agencies will also have to identify their national security systems, report incidents and secure tools that transfer data between classified and unclassified systems. The President's move also sets timelines and guidance for implementing technologies required in the executive order, ranging from encryption to multi-factor authentication.

Biden's move complements an order that was initially signed in response to critical infrastructure cyberattacks. In theory, this will tighten security at some of the most sensitive federal government institutions. As with the order, though, the memo can only accomplish so much without Congress' support. Virginia Senator Mark Warner, for instance, used the signing to ask Congress to pass legislation requiring notices of critical infrastructure breaches within 72 hours.

The timing is apt, at least. The President's effort comes as tensions rise between Russia, the US and American allies, with Ukraine blaming Russia for a string of cyberattacks that knocked out government websites. The situation might not lead to outright cyberwarfare, but the US still has a strong incentive to close as many security holes as possible.

With the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled to discuss the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act this week, Apple and Google are stepping up their opposition to both bills. According to CNBC, Apple recently told lawmakers the legislation would make iPhone users less safe.

“The bills put consumers in harm’s way because of the real risk of privacy and security breaches,” Apple said in a letter seen by CNBC. The company specifically targets app sideloading as a potential threat. One of the provisions of the Open App Markets Act would force platform holders to allow consumers to sideload software and install third-party app stores. “But, if Apple is forced to enable sideloading, millions of Americans will likely suffer malware attacks on their phones that would otherwise have been stopped,” the company states in the letter.

On Tuesday, Google, in a post attributed to Kent Walker, the company’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, advanced a similar argument. “Google is able to protect billions of people around the world from cyberattacks because we bake security and privacy protections into our services,” he said.

Walker warns the bills could hurt the company’s ability to integrate automated security features in its services. He also claims the bills could hurt the company’s ability and that of its US counterparts to compete with foreign firms by forcing them to obtain approval from “government bureaucrats” whenever they plan to release new features or address existing issues.

Apple and Google may not like the proposed bills, but they have support from others in the tech ecosystem. Specifically, the Coalition for App Fairness, an organization Epic and Spotify co-founded to pressure the two companies to change their app store policies, has come out in support of the legislation. “Moving this important legislation forward sends a clear and unambiguous message that monopoly control of the app ecosystem is no longer acceptable,” the group said on Monday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will discuss both bills on Thursday, at which point they could advance to the floor of the Senate. At that point, the Senate would need to make time to vote on the legislation. That’s something that could take time with all the other issues it needs to consider in the coming weeks.

Israeli police have employed NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to extract data from phones belonging to Israeli citizens, according to an investigation by the country’s Calcalist business publication. Police reportedly used the controversial software to target a number of individuals, including politicians and members of an activist group that had called for the removal of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to the report, Israeli police conducted their surveillance without court supervision, a claim both police and public officials deny.

“All police activity in this field is done in accordance with the law, on the basis of court orders and strict work procedures,” Israeli Police said. The Washington Post reports Omer Bar-Lev, the country’s country’s public security minister, said an initial investigation had found no evidence of a “secretive wiretapping” program but promised a judge would check everything “thoroughly and unequivocally.”

“We would like to clarify that the company does not operate the systems in its customers’ possession and is not involved in their operation,” NSO Group said in a statement the company shared with Israeli media. “The company sells its products under license and supervision for the use of security bodies and state law enforcement agencies, to prevent crime and terrorism legally, and according to court orders and local law in each country.”

Per The Guardian, Israeli law only allows Shin Bet, the country’s domestic intelligence agency, to hack a phone without a court order. What’s more, the only context in which the agency is allowed to carry out such an action is to prevent a terrorist attack involving Palestinians, Israeli-Arabs or Israeli-Jews. Approval from a senior Shin Bet official or the attorney general’s office is also required. No such exemption exists for the country’s police service. However, according to Calcalist, the software wasn’t directly covered by Israel’s existing laws.

The report comes a month after Reuters found the Pegasus spyware had been used to target at least nine US State Department officials. In that instance, an unknown assailant had used the software to target federal employees who were either stationed in Uganda or whose work involved the African country. NSO has claimed its software can’t target devices linked to American or Israeli phone numbers. 

Folks in the US can now order free, at-home COVID-19 tests from a United States Postal Service website, one day earlier than expected. Last week, the Biden administration said people would be able to place orders starting on Wednesday. At the time of the announcement, COVIDtests.gov was a placeholder site, but it now directs users to the USPS to place an order.

Households can each request one set of four rapid antigen tests. USPS will start shipping the kits later this month and usually within seven to 12 days of ordering. 

The administration says the site went live one day early as part of its beta phase, according toCNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins. Officials are hoping to troubleshoot the site and ensure the official launch goes smoothly on Wednesday. Sure enough, at the time of writing, some people were having trouble loading the site, so you might not be able to place an order right away.

The COVIDtests.gov site provides some more information about the tests. You should see results within 30 minutes and can be taken anywhere. It provides guidance on when to take a test, as well as directions on what to do based on the results. The site also has resources about testing sites and insurance reimbursement for at-home tests.

The Biden administration said it was buying a billion rapid, at-home COVID-19 tests to distribute to Americans. Half of those are expected to be available for order this week. The White House said its goal was to make sure everyone has a test available when they need one, especially given that tests are in high demand and are often difficult to find in stores.

The UK government has revealed that it plans to update its laws in order "to bring the promotion of cryptoassets within the scope of financial promotions legislation." That will ensure any crypto promotion will be held to the same standards as promotion for stocks, shares and insurance products. It also has fall in line with the rules set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Governments have recently started cracking down on crypto ads in an effort to protect consumers from scams they may not be familiar with. The Spanish government is currently establishing rules on how influencers and their sponsors promote cryptocurrencies. Meanwhile, Singapore's authorities asked crypto companies outright not to market their services to the public. One type of scam is the "pump and dump," in which fraudsters find ways to artificially inflate the value of a cryptocurrency and to get people to invest money in it. They then unload their shares while the value is high to make a lot of money, thereby lowering the coin's value in the process. 

According to the UK government, approximately 2.3 million people in the country are now thought to own a cryptoasset. While cryptoassets' popularity is rising, the FCA's research suggests (PDF) that potential investors' level of understanding about them is on the decline. That means people may not be fully aware of the risks involved when it comes to investing in them, which further supports "the case for regulatory intervention to ensure that cryptoasset promotions are fair, clear, and not misleading. "

Unless you’re a lawyer, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve never read through a website’s entire terms of service. There’s a simple reason for that. Far too often, they’re too long and difficult to parse. Some services offer summary statements, but they’re the exception, not the norm.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers made up of Representative Lori Trahan and Senators Bill Cassidy and Ben Ray Luján of Louisana and New Mexico want to change that. They’ve introduced the Terms-of-service Labelling, Design and Readability Act – that’s TLDR for short. Taking a page from Apple, the proposed legislation would require online businesses to include a “nutrition label-style” summary at the top of their terms of service agreements and make the contracts easy for researchers to examine through the use of XML tags. It would also require them to disclose any recent data breaches, as well as provide information on whether a user can delete their data and how they would go about doing that.

“For far too long, blanket terms of service agreements have forced consumers to either ‘agree’ to all of a company’s conditions or lose access to a website or app entirely. No negotiation, no alternative, and no real choice,” said Representative Trahan. The group cites a 2012 study that found it would take the average American 76 workdays to read all the terms of service contracts they’ve agreed to use their favorite online services as the basis for the need of the TLDR Act. Should the legislation pass, it would empower the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to enforce it.

With its landmark climate legislation in jeopardy, the Biden administration has announced a series of new executive actions to accelerate the US’s transition to a clean power grid. On Wednesday, the White House said it would allocate billions toward projects that lead to the construction of more wind, solar and geothermal energy across the country.

Specifically, the administration announced it’s moving forward with the lease of six commercial areas off the coasts of New York and New Jersey for use in wind farm projects. On offer is more than 488,000 acres of ocean seafloor for the winning bidders to build an estimated 5.6 and 7 gigawatts of clean power generation. As part of the bidding process, the White House says it will incentivize participants to support labor jobs and to source turbine components from American manufacturers. The New York Bight development is one of the primary pillars of the Biden administration’s plan to build out 30 gigawatts of offshore wind production by 2030.

Another significant facet of today’s announcement is the “Building a Better Grid” initiative. Pulling from the $65 billion Congress set aside for power grid upgrades when it passed President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the initiative earmarks $2.5 billion toward funding the installation of new transmission lines. It’s putting another $3 billion toward an expansion of the Smart Grid Investment Grant Program, which supports projects that increase the capacity and flexibility of existing electrical infrastructure.

The administration notes it will also allocate $10 billion in grants to states, tribes and utility companies to help those groups strengthen their local transmission lines. Taken together, the investments will help modernize the country’s power grid, making it easier to transport renewable energy from remote generation sites to where it’s needed most. It will also harden the power grid against the kind of extreme weather events that have become more commonplace as the effects of climate change have worsened.

Today’s announcement sees the White House putting forward meaningful climate policy, but if the Biden administration is to have a chance of meeting the president’s ambitious goal of decarbonizing the country’s power grid by 2035, it will need to bypass the legislative gridlock that has left the Build Better Back Framework in limbo. Much of that will depend on whether the White House can convince Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia to support the approximately $1.75 trillion climate and social spending bill.

New York City has purchased 184 all-electric Mustang Mach-Es, and they're all going to be used for law enforcement and emergency response purposes. As Electrek noted, the move is part of the city's plans to buy over 1,250 electric vehicles in 2022. That, in turn, is part of a larger endeavor to "drastically cut citywide climate emissions" with the help of a $420 million investment. 

In its announcement, the local NYC government said the Mach-Es will be used by the New York Police Department (NYPD), the New York City Sheriff's Office, the Department of Correction, the Department of Parks and Recreation, the Department of Environmental Protection, NYC Emergency Management, DCAS Police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. They'll be replacing those agencies' gas-powered vehicles after the city receives them by June 30th, 2022.

NYC also said that its Mach-E purchase is part of its biggest EV purchase to date, though that may not be the case for long. The city has also approved the option to buy up to 250 Tesla Model 3 vehicles any time over the next five years. 

Earlier this month, Ford announced that it's increasing the production of the Mach-E to 200,000 vehicles per year in the US starting in 2022 and in Europe by 2023. Company CEO Jim Farley said there's a huge demand for the electric vehicle, and Ford is reportedly delaying its Explorer and Aviator EVs to ensure that it can manufacture enough Mach-Es to keep up with the demand.

On Monday, the Biden administration finalized new fuel efficiency standards designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions put out by passenger vehicles. By 2026, the Environmental Protection Agency will require that automaker fleets travel an average of about 55 miles per gallon, up from the 37 miles per gallon standard they’re held to as of this year.

The agency estimates the policy will save American drivers between $210 billion and $420 billion through 2050 on fuel costs. Over the life of a model year 2026 vehicle, that will translate to about $1,080 in individual consumer savings after factoring in the higher initial cost of a more efficient vehicle. The EPA estimates the policy will also prevent the release of about 3.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide over the same time frame.

“We followed the science, we listened to stakeholders, and we are setting robust and rigorous standards that will aggressively reduce the pollution that is harming people and our planet – and save families money at the same time,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.

The new standards effectively mirror those put forward by the Obama administration in 2012. Had former President Trump not weakened those in 2018, they would have required automakers to make vehicles that could travel about 51 miles per gallon by 2025.

Jeff Alson, a former EPA senior engineer, told The New York Times, the new standards recapture the emissions cuts carved out by the Trump administration. “That’s good, but it’s not going to get us anywhere near the level we’ve got to get to reduce vehicle emissions enough to protect the planet,” he said.

We've reached out to Ford, General Motors, Honda, Toyota and Stellantis for comment on today's rulemaking. 

The new standards mark the most significant climate action taken to date by President Biden. As of 2019, the transportation sector has been the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. However, the announcement comes just one day after Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he would not support the Democratic party’s Build Back Better plan. Among other items, the approximately $2 trillion plan includes a proposal for up to $12,500 in individual tax subsidies for Americans who buy an EV as their next car.